RFC 5781

The rsync URI Scheme

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) S. Weiler
Request for Comments: 5781 SPARTA, Inc.
Category: Informational D. Ward
ISSN: 2070-1721 Juniper
R. Housley
Vigil Security
February 2010 The rsync URI Scheme
Abstract
This document specifies the rsync Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)
scheme.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5781.
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1. Introduction
URIs were previously defined in RFC 2396, which was obsoleted by RFC
3986 [RFC3986]. The procedures for registering new URI schemes are
defined in RFC 4395 [RFC4395]. The rsync utility provides fast
incremental file transfer [rsync]. This document defines a URI
scheme for rsync.
2. rsync URI registration
This section contains the registration template for the rsync URI
scheme in accordance with RFC 4395 [RFC4395]. This URI scheme is for
the rsync protocol using TCP as the transport protocol. Other
transports, such as rsync over SSH, are not supported by this URI
scheme.
URI scheme name: rsync
Status: provisional
URI scheme syntax: An rsync URI describes a source or destination for
the rsync application including a hostname, path, and optional user
and port. The generic form of the rsync URI is:
rsync://[user@]host[:PORT]/Source
The rsync URI follows the general syntax from RFC 3986 and is defined
by the following ABNF [RFC5234]:
rsyncuri = "rsync:" hier-part
; See RFC 3986 for the definition
; of hier-part
URI scheme semantics: An rsync URI may be used as either a source or
destination for the rsync application. If the port is not specified,
it defaults to 873.
Encoding considerations: Since the rsync URI is defined using
standard elements from RFC 3986, no special encoding considerations
are present.
Applications/protocols that use this URI scheme name: The only
application that uses rsync URIs is rsync.
Interoperability considerations: Since only one application is
expected to make use of rsync URIs, this URI scheme is expected to
have few interoperability concerns.